Most messed up cartoons?

[KyriakosCH]

The 80s had cool cartoons, and in 99,9% of cases they were about Good fighting Evil.
That said, very few of those shows actually had anything sinister; they tended to be campy.
It wasn't the case for the infamous INHUMANOIDS, a show so dark that it got cancelled after the first season - yet it still managed to make an impression and sell a few toys 

Some sequences from the awesome and brooding Inhumanoids, where vast monsters lived below the ground and occasionally dismembered or transformed humans into something better.

"Inhumanoids; the evil that lies within.
From down in the fiery depths of the earth where nightmares begin" 

You can suggest your own contender; it is futile though, cause Inhumanoids> other cartoons.

[Blondbraid]

An anime-geek friend of mine could probably come up with a whole bunch of Japanese horror stuff, and there are western adult animated films like Felidae, Heavy metal and basically all movies ever created by Ralph Bakshi,
but to me personally, that kind of stuff doesn't really count as particularly messed up since those works were always intended to be dark and weird and aimed at adults (and edgelord teens) who knew what they were watching and presumably old enough to handle it. To me, the most messed up cartoons will always be the ones aimed at children, and some of the worst were made by none other than Disney.

I'm not kidding, The Black Cauldron was their first attempt at a PG movie and it was full of undead creatures and horrific imagery, and and one of the deleted scenes, whilst having unfinished animation,
is easily the goriest thing ever animated. I'm not kidding, you really shouldn't open the link at work, unless your workplace is an abattoir. 

And then there's The Hunchback of Notre Dame, which I've already posted on before, but it's just that dark and strange of a movie that I can't resist posting this again;

This is a scene from Schindler's List, a holocaust movie that was rated from age 15 and upwards;

Now compare it against the beginning of this scene from the hunchback, a movie rated G, deemed fun for the whole family:

Seriously, that story based on a Victor Hugo novel centered on religious persecution, racism and attempted rape was turned into a Disney Musical, with one song featuring murder and attempted infanticide, a jaunty song where the comedy relief almost have the heroes lynched, complete with having them placed in gallows with nooses around their necks, and a villain song number literally about the villain's desire to murder the heroine if he can't force himself on her, all of it complete with tie-in toys!

But if I may post runner's up, whilst not that scary, it was still weird enough that I spent years thinking this cartoon was just a fever-dream my childhood brain had cooked up:

My Little Pony used to be HEAVY METAL AF.

Also, if you want some vintage lunacy, I can recommend the short film Swing You Sinner's by Max Fleicher (of Betty Boop fame):

So, how do any of these stand against INHUMANOIDS?

[KyriakosCH]

The 80s MLP was cool; i remember the episode with the massive spider

Spiral Zone was more cool than messed-up, about an infected zone, virtual reality and radiation:

Actual 80s anime were far more brutal, of course.

[Danvzare]

If I sat down and really thought about it, I could probably come up with some really good contenders. Since most children media is quite messed up if you think about it too long (For example: In The Night Garden is a show about the dreams of someone who is lost at sea.)

But the first that comes to mind, is something I haven't watched but been warned about (and of course isn't for kids).
It's called "Boku no Pico". And yes it's an anime, but anime is just short for animation, and cartoon is just another word for animation, so I stick my tongue out at anyone who says that anime aren't cartoons. 

[VampireWombat]

But of course anime can be cartoons. There's really a fine line between "cartoons" and some anime anyway. Many cartoons from the 80s and 90s had animation outsourced to some of the same studios that have made anime.
And the line between Generation 1 Transformers and stuff like Voltron is very thin, especially due to the circle of Transformers being repurposed Japanese toys...
It's just that anime has some much stuff that can be considered "messed up" to western audiences that the entire thread could be filled with it.
And looking up Boku no Pico says that it's a hentai. So if that counts, then the only hentai I rented should count. It was purely by accident. I was like 19 or 20 when I rented it. It was placed in the kids section along with Pokemon and other kid friendly anime. But within 10 minutes I realized it was hentai because of the androgynous space vampire engaging in homosexual sexual activity. When I returned it, I complained about where it was placed. Mostly because I could imagine some kid picking it up and a parent not even looking at the rating like I did...

[Cassiebsg]

Fantasia!
Those dancing brooms are what nightmares are made of! 

[KyriakosCH]

Well, here is something messed up: apparently Saber Rider originally (japanese version) was called "Seijushi Bismarck".

[Blondbraid]

I know I just had to post it here the second I saw this clip, but there is an animated movie called "The Queen's Corgi",
a movie about Queen Elizabeth's Corgies... ...And Donald Trump is in it!!! 

[Laura Hunt]

Fantasia!
Those dancing brooms are what nightmares are made of! 

Cassiebsg: Those dancing brooms in Fantasia are so scary!
Chernabog: Am I a joke to you?



But in fact, what I found scariest about the "Night on Bald Mountain" segment was his infernal cohort of skeletons, ghosts, apparitions and dancing devils. Too much for an innocent 7-year old!

[Galen]

This is a scene from Schindler's List, a holocaust movie that was rated from age 15 and upwards;

The film is only a PG in the UK. So almost all-ages / 10 and up.
Then again Star Wars is a U (actual all-ages) and that has both smouldering blood corpses and graphic, bloody, dismemberment of arms.

Our ratings board is really weird around 'historically significant' films.

[Blondbraid]

This is a scene from Schindler's List, a holocaust movie that was rated from age 15 and upwards;

The film is only a PG in the UK. So almost all-ages / 10 and up.
Then again Star Wars is a U (actual all-ages) and that has both smouldering blood corpses and graphic, bloody, dismemberment of arms.

Our ratings board is really weird around 'historically significant' films.

That's messed up!
I've always been of the firm opinion that one should err on the side of caution when rating films, and if some kids really badly want to see something above their age-range, they can always buy a DVD once those end up in the bargain bin.
And it's not just out of concern for the children, but for the adults. No one wants to have their expensive cinema experience ruined by crying kids.

Anyway, While I'm at it, have anyone else seen The Magic Voyage? It's a "children's movie" about Columbus discovering America featuring such insanity as a literal bookworm teaching Columbus that the earth is round, Columbus pulling a spyglass out of his trousers in a way that it looks like he's pulling out something completely different, and native Americans thanking him for colonizing their homeland, and that's not even the half of it! But if I had to choose just one inappropriate moment from the movie, it'd have to be this scene, where the sailors start a mutiny and try to hang the protagonist, and the entire hanging is treated as harmless fun on par with giving someone a wedgie (Skip to 10:13 to see what I'm talking about):

I still remember the alarming reports that came out when they hanged Saddam Hussein and some children had pretended to hang other kids as part of their play after seeing it on the news,
so just imagine some even younger and more impressionable kids seeing this movie and seeing the protagonist being just fine after being hanged by the neck for several minutes... 

[Mandle]

The Great Detective Conan is quite messed up. It's aimed at kids 8 and up or so and every episode starts with a murder, sometimes quite grisly: Poison victims with their faces frozen in agony, people crushed under falling pianos etc.

But the one that dropped my jaw the other day was a guy sitting on a toilet who had (supposedly) put a pistol in his mouth and pulled the trigger, complete with his brain matter splattered in a huge arc on the wall behind him and dripping down to the floor.

Later in the episode we even get an animated flashback to the brain-splatter.

It's a great show for the most part but I doubt it will ever air on western TV at a time appropriate for kids.

[Blondbraid]

So there is a surprising amount of animated kid movies featuring the Titanic out there, and the one featuring a rapping dog is the most historically accurate of the bunch, but the by far most weird and inappropriate insertion of Titanic in a children's movie has got to be Samson and Sally, where the two titular whales who are the protagonists encounter two singing walruses who act as comedy relief, and during their song number they find the wreck of the Titanic and build a human centipede out of the skeletons of the dead crewmembers in order to use their remains as a xylophone! Also there are random references to the trans-Atlantic slave trade and a bunch of Nazi imagery and the entire song ends with both walruses poisoning a bunch of fish and making them die in agony while both of them sing and laugh.

Did I also mention the film was Danish, but not even Danish people can understand the lyrics?